Help Kickoff Our Zero Waste Program!

Today’s blog comes from ILACSD’s Community Events Coordinator, Lexi! Lexi and Natalie, ILACSD’s Director of Community Events, have been working hard to get our Zero Waste cleanup program off the ground and this Saturday, December 6th, we need your help to kick it off! Read more below about our new Zero Waste program and why you should be a part of it!

Every year, I Love A Clean San Diego mobilizes tens of thousands of volunteers to conserve and enhance our local environment. We often provide plastic bags and disposable gloves to school groups, businesses, families and community groups so that they can pick up litter before it makes its way out to the Pacific Ocean, where it becomes a big problem for marine birds, fish and mammals.

ILACSD is excited to take these environmental efforts one step further. In an effort to reduce our use of single-use plastics like bags and gloves, we’re launching a Zero Waste Cleanup program: you can now schedule your own zero waste cleanup event through our most popular volunteer program, Adopt-A-Beach.

Even our smallest supporters can make a large impact by choosing reusables such as work gloves and a bucket to collect litter!

Through the Adopt-A-Beach program, we provide volunteers with plastic bags and disposable gloves for free so that they can plan their own beach or canyon cleanup at any time. But thanks to our new zero waste cleanup option, you can eliminate single-use plastics from your event: we’ll lend you buckets, sturdy work gloves, and a cooler for volunteers to refill their reusable water bottles. Not only will you be removing harmful litter from our environment, but you’ll be reducing the resources needed for your cleanup project and not generating any additional waste!

Even when used for projects like picking up litter, single-use plastic bags are harmful for our environment. Plastic doesn’t break down naturally, so it lasts for a very long time. If these plastic bags end up as litter on our beaches, animals can mistake them for food.

To kick off this new program, we’ll be hosting a zero waste cleanup event this Saturday, December 6 from 10AM-12PM. Volunteers will meet at Cannon Park in Carlsbad and walk across the street to the beach to pick up litter—all with zero plastic bags and zero disposable gloves! We’re encouraging volunteers to bring their own reusable supplies, but we’ll bring extra work gloves and buckets as backups.

Simply sort trash and recyclables into different buckets, then dump the debris into the appropriate container. It’s that easy and it doesn’t generate extra waste!

Want to get involved with our zero waste cleanup efforts? Email Lexi at lambrogi@cleansd.org to find out more or to sign up for our Carlsbad event.